Jim and I wrote last week about the future fallout from an AI-scared generation of young Americans ("The kids aren't AI-right, Part 1"). Today, we dig deeper into job panic in a new "Behind the Curtain" column.

Young Americans are scared of more than AI. They're downright panicky about finding a job at all.

• Only 20% of young workers told Gallup in Q4 last year that it's a good time to find a quality job, down from 62% at the pollster's peak for the measure in October 2021. You rarely see mood swings this severe.

Why it matters: For 70 years, a bachelor's degree was the most reliable on-ramp to a stable career. That's no longer true. And that's before AI hits entry-level work at scale.

This isn't just worried kids succumbing to bad vibes. It's a hard, empirical reality. Let's dig deeper into the numbers, all based on the latest N.Y. Fed data from December:

• The U.S. unemployment rate is 4.2% — near generational lows. For recent college grads ages 22-27, it's 5.6%.
• That remains near the widest gap on record. Until COVID, college grads almost always had lower unemployment rates than the overall workforce.

Blame AI, right? Well, the evidence is inconclusive. There are many reasons, but uncertainty strikes us as the leading cause.

• It doesn't motivate employers to hire when AI execs warn their products will handle huge swaths of entry-level white-collar tasks. That gives permission to pause hiring — or even shed jobs — in anticipation.

We talk to scores of CEOs every month and hear a common theme: With so much uncertainty about the economy, tariffs, geopolitics and AI, it's easier to freeze hiring and take a wait-and-see approach.

• Many feel they overhired during COVID and don't want to staff up now, only to lay people off if AI does what its makers promise.
• Indeed, CEOs tell us they assume AI will replace lots of white-collar work. So they've paused backfilling jobs typically filled by junior new hires.
• Think of it this way: AI anticipation is the factor right now, not AI implementation.

Between the lines: Even the glimmers of good news might not be what they appear. ZipRecruiter's annual grad report, out last week, found that the share of recent grads landing a job within three months of graduation increased to 77% this year from 63% last year.

• But the survey also found that 73% of recent grads are actively considering gig or freelance work. Only a quarter are on their dream career path.
• "It could be working in a fast-food place or driving for DoorDash," ZipRecruiter economist Nicole Bachaud told The Wall Street Journal about the pop in employed grads.

🥊 Reality check: Young people aren't helpless and unemployable. They need to ensure their majors match the changing landscape and master the AI skills employers will demand in the coming years.

The bottom line: This is an employment problem that'll likely grow into a big political one as America heads toward 2028.

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Axios' Ina Fried, who's covered Apple for almost three decades, writes:

The Tim Cook era is coming to a close with an existential challenge for Apple: figuring out what comes after the iPhone.

• Why it matters: Cook — who'll cede the CEO reins to hardware chief John Ternus, while remaining executive chairman — extended the iPhone's success into products like the Apple Watch and AirPods and built a powerful services business.

But the company hasn't broken into a major new category — and has stumbled into the AI era.

• Cook's efforts to expand far beyond the iPhone — including the Vision Pro headset and an attempt to enter the autonomous car market — have largely sputtered.
• The company has struggled to turn Apple Intelligence — the vision Cook outlined for AI in 2024 — into a reality, repeatedly delaying its most ambitious features.

The other side: Apple's caution with AI could pay off if it can maintain its hardware advantage while others spend heavily on AI models, as Dan Primack outlined last week.

• While most of its tech giant peers have spent billions on data centers and compute capacity, Apple has avoided such large outlays.
• If the AI models turn out to be a commodity, Apple may look wise to have avoided the compute capacity craze entirely.

🧠 The bottom line: Cook proved Apple could continue to grow without Steve Jobs. Ternus must prove it can still innovate.

• Read Apple's announcement ... Share this story ... More on John Ternus, via Bloomberg Apple guru Mark Gurman (gift link).

Intel from Axios' Barak Ravid: Vice President Vance is expected to depart for Islamabad for talks with Iran over a potential deal to end the war.

• Vance will arrive in Pakistan with the ceasefire on the verge of expiring. President Trump has threatened to bomb Iranian bridges and power plants if a deal can't be reached.
• While a full-scale deal on such a tight timeline would be difficult, Trump could also agree to extend the deadline if there are signs of progress.

👀 Behind the scenes: The White House spent all yesterday waiting for a signal from Tehran that it would send its negotiating team to Islamabad.

• A knowledgeable source said the Iranians were stalling amid apparent pressure from the Revolutionary Guards on the negotiators to hold a firmer line: no talks without an end to the U.S. blockade.
• The Iranian team waited for a green light from the supreme leader. It came last night, according to the source.

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Reranking the world's billionaires ... by altruism.

• Forbes calculated how much the biggest billionaire givers would be worth if you added donations back into their net worths.

Elon Musk — the world's richest person by nearly $600 billion — still holds the top spot, "but he loses serious ground to his more charitable contemporaries." Musk has disbursed just 0.06% of his fortune to those in need.

• In the rerank, Bill Gates would be the second-wealthiest person in the world instead of the 19th.
• In third: Warren Buffett, who has "donated more than 278,000 Class A shares of his conglomerate Berkshire Hathaway — worth some $200 billion if he still held them."

The intrigue: "MacKenzie Scott, who climbs 58 rungs when adding back her immense charitable giving, to No. 26. Meanwhile, her ex-husband Jeff Bezos, who has given far less to charity, drops out of the planet's top five in our rerank."

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Silicon Valley's most powerful venture firm helped launch a 24/7 livestream on X yesterday, joining a wave of tech money piling into the news cycle as the internet's hottest new asset class, Axios' Zachary Basu writes.

• Why it matters: "Monitoring the situation" — the theme of Polymarket's pop-up D.C. bar, and now the name of a new show (MTS) funded by Andreessen Horowitz — has become one of the most viral and lucrative memes in tech.

The big picture: Legacy media is shedding jobs, audiences and relevance. An emboldened tech ecosystem, deep-pocketed and fast-growing, is racing to replace it.

• Backed by angel investors, MTS is being pitched as Silicon Valley's answer to cable news. Skeptics were quick to mock the format as a well-funded livestream of venture partners switching tabs among X, prediction markets and Wikipedia.
• OpenAI this month reportedly paid in the low hundreds of millions for TBPN, a buzzy livestreamed tech talk show now reporting to Sam Altman's chief global affairs officer, Chris Lehane.
• 🔮 Kalshi and Polymarket now command valuations in the tens of billions, fueled by bettors trading record volume on everything from the Iran war to the best new AI model.

Keep reading.

At Kevin Warsh's Fed confirmation hearing today, Republicans will cast him as a change agent ready to shake up a tradition-bound institution, Axios Fed watcher Neil Irwin writes.

• In remarks introducing Warsh obtained by Axios, Sen. Dave McCormick (R-Pa.) will say the onetime Fed governor "brings a reformer's heart" and "will shake up a stagnant institution at a time when change is sorely needed."
• That echoes some of Warsh's own criticisms of the Fed, saying that the central bank "must not be ruled by pointy-headed economists poring over outdated models and reams of market data."

Democrats on the Senate Banking Committee plan to focus on potential conflicts of interest stemming from Warsh's expansive portfolio, which includes some investments that could be affected by Fed policy. They also intend to question his independence from President Trump.

• Go deeper: What to look for ... McCormick's full introduction.

As we signaled yesterday, Labor Secretary Lori Chavez-DeRemer is leaving the Trump administration to take a private sector job.

• Steven Cheung, White House communications director, announced that Keith Sonderling will serve as acting Labor secretary.

Chavez-DeRemer's departure follows repeated accusations of abusing power:

• Whistleblowers allege she directed staff to "make up" official trips to cover travel with family and friends.
• She's accused of drinking on the job, having an inappropriate relationship with a security detail member and taking staff to a strip club.
• Her husband was barred from Labor Department headquarters after female staffers accused him of sexual assault.

She thanked President Trump in an X post. Both she and her husband deny the allegations.

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"Purple State is a story that had been bopping around in my mind for years," Fox News star and best-selling author Dana Perino tells me about her debut novel, out today, billed as a "politically and romantically charged" small-town rom-com:

"It was shaped by living everywhere from Wyoming and Colorado to Washington, D.C., and New York, and learning that Americans have far more in common than we are often told. I wanted to write a novel that looks beyond politics and focuses on friendships, ambition, love, and the choices we make about who we build our lives with."

I first covered Dana, 53, when she worked for President George W. Bush (first under the late, great Tony Snow, and later as press secretary), and I was a bright-eyed Washington Post reporter. Now, she's both co-anchor of Fox's "America's Newsroom" and co-host of the top-rated "The Five."

• "Writing fiction for the first time was both exhilarating and challenging," she told me. "I had to create an entire emotional world from scratch and make it feel real. It also gave me a chance to weave in the mentoring lessons I care about most in a more personal, relatable way. I hope readers close the book feeling hopeful, joyful, and reminded that politics doesn't have to define us."

More from Dana ... Read a sample.